


Summer Song

by Siria



Series: After the Other [7]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-09
Updated: 2008-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the sounds of a back garden in a Dublin suburb on a summer afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Song

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Jenn.

These are the sounds of a back garden in a Dublin suburb on a summer afternoon: chatter on the radio drifting muted from the kitchen, as Concerned in Clontarf pours out her woes to Joe Duffy; a lawnmower droning fitfully a couple of houses over; buses chugging up the road outside, the sound of their engines mingling with the tinny, repetitive music of the ice-cream van plying its trade to children already bored now that the first flush of freedom from school is over.

In mid June, the first flush of freedom from college is done with, too, exams and marking and the occasionally combative examiners' meetings already fading into memory, but John's not bored. He's lying on the hammock that he'd strung up in the green shade between the house and the oak tree that curves over their lawn, one flip-flop clad foot dangling over the edge. Next to him, in the hammock made for one—but which holds two just as well if you press close and constant—Rodney's drowsing in his battered old tracksuit bottoms and his washing machine-shrunk t-shirt. On his chest, the most recent issue of _Journal of Modern Physics_ is propped open and ignored.

There's not been much time for this over the past few weeks: not with the demands of bureaucracy and form filling, not with intermittent showers and a cold wind that sometimes blusters its way in from the Irish Sea and sets John's jeans dancing next to Rodney's boxers on the clothes line. There's time now, though, time for drifting, the week or so that they'll call their holiday for all that they won't leave the house except to wander down to the corner shop in search of vital supplies—sour cream and onion Pringles (Rodney); milk (John's tea).

This close to, John can't take in all Rodney's face at once, is forced instead to look at each individual facet of him as they are revealed and concealed by the inconstant shade cast by the rustling leaves above them. He still watches, watches as Rodney shifts and squirms, eyes moving rapidly behind his eyelids, his eyelashes, his mouth alternately slack and curiously mobile, as if he can't stop talking with the world, even in his sleep. There are months and years between them now, a new life they've begun to live together, and still John sees something new in Rodney each time he looks—something else that unbeknownst to him had led to him looking across the library that first day, sensing that Rodney was the one whose eye he should catch.

Each moment of insight, each time he's fallen a little further, it's always happened in rushed moments—a train journey; a quick-paced march down Grafton Street; Rodney flapping around inelegantly in the sea at Salthill—but now John has the time to savour it, to hold on to the feeling that aches sweetly and wonderfully in his chest, the one that he's come to associate only with Rodney.

So he shifts closer, careful to keep them both balanced, side by side together, and presses dry kisses, solemn as a child, to Rodney's temple, his cheekbone, the space behind his ear, to stubble and feathery-hair and salt-sweet skin, keeps going even when Rodney stirs and mumbles contentedly in his sleep— one kiss for each way John loves him, one kiss for each day they've been together, while the sun moves westward in the sky, and Rodney smiles in his sleep.


End file.
